Tuesday, April 19, 2016

A new
study by Guilia McHenry, the Chief Economist in the Office of Policy Analysis and Development at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration
(NTIA), shows that consumers of all income levels are substituting mobile
broadband for fixed broadband. Brian Fung highlighted some of the study’s
findings in a Washington Postarticle:

In 2013, 8 percent of households making
$50,000 to $75,000 a year were mobile-only. Fast-forward a couple of years, and
that figure now stands at 18 percent. Seventeen percent of households making
$75,000 to $100,000 are mobile-only now, compared with 8 percent two years ago.
And 15 percent of households earning more than $100,000 are mobile-only, vs.
6 percent in 2013.

As
Randolph May and I wrote in a January
2016 blog, the number of “smartphone-only” adults has been increasing over
the past several years. This NTIA study shows that consumers who substitute
mobile broadband for fixed broadband are not only low-income individuals but those further up the income scale too.

It
is time for the FCC to recognize this shift in consumer preferences and take into
account the actual realities and competitiveness of the broadband marketplace when it considers imposing regulations on Internet service providers.